Hank Williams
Hiram King "Hank" Williams
(September 17, 1923 - January 1, 1953) was a legendary Country & Western singer-songwriter-musician. He and Bob Dylan are
regarded as the most significant and influential American songwriters of the 20th century. Williams wrote, sang and recorded
35 singles (five released posthumously) that reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart,
including 11 that ranked number one (three posthumously).
Williams was born in Butler County, Alabama. His parents were Jessie Lillybelle "Lillie" and Elonzo Huble "Lon" Williams, and he was of English ancestry. Elonzo Williams worked as an engineer for the railroads of the W.T. Smith lumber company. He was drafted during World War I, serving from July 1918 until June 1919. He was severely injured after falling from a truck, breaking his collarbone and suffering a severe blow to the head. After his return, the family's first child, Irene, was born on August 8, 1922. Another son of theirs died shortly after birth. Their third child, Hiram, was born on September 17, 1923, in Mount Olive. Since Elonzo Williams was a Mason, and his wife was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, the child was named after Hiram I of Tyre (one of the three founders of the Masons, according to Masonic legend). His name was misspelled as "Hiriam" on his birth certificate which was prepared and signed when Hank was about ten years old.
As a child, he was nicknamed "Harm" by his family and "Herky" or "Poots" by his friends. He was born with spina bifida
occulta, a birth defect, centered on the spinal column, which gave him lifelong pain - a factor in his later abuse of alcohol
and drugs. Williams' father was frequently relocated by the lumber company railway for which he worked, and the family lived
in many southern Alabama towns. In 1930, when Williams was seven years old, his father began suffering from facial paralysis.
At a Veterans Affairs clinic in Pensacola, Florida, doctors determined that the cause was a brain aneurysm, and Elonzo was
sent to the VA Medical Center in Alexandria, Louisiana. He remained hospitalized for eight years, rendering him mostly absent
throughout Hiram's childhood. From that time on, his mother Lillie Williams assumed responsibility for the family.
In the fall of 1934, the Williams family moved to Greenville, Alabama, where Lillie opened a boarding house next to the Butler County courthouse. In 1935, the Williams family settled in Garland, Alabama, where Lillie Williams opened a new boarding house. After a while, they moved with his cousin Opal McNeil to Georgiana, Alabama where Lillie managed to find several side jobs to support her children, despite the bleak economic climate of the Great Depression. She worked in a cannery and served as a night-shift nurse in the local hospital.
Their first house burned, and the family lost all their possessions. They moved to a new house on the other side of town
on Rose Street, which Williams' mother soon turned into a boarding house. The house had a small garden, on which they grew
diverse crops that Williams and his sister Irene sold around Georgiana. At a chance meeting in Georgiana, Hank Williams met
U.S. Representative J. Lister Hill while he was campaigning across Alabama. Williams told Hill that his mother was interested
to talk with him about his problems and her need to collect Elonzo Williams's disability pension. With Hill's help, the family
began collecting the money. Despite his medical condition, the family managed fairly well financially throughout the Great
Depression.
There are several versions of how Williams got his first guitar. His mother stated that she bought it with money from selling peanuts, but many other prominent residents of the town claimed to have been the one who purchased the guitar for him. While living in Georgiana, Williams met Rufus "Tee-Tot" Payne, a street performer. Payne gave Williams guitar lessons in exchange for meals prepared by Lillie Williams or money. Payne's guitar musical style was Mississippi Delta Blues.
He taught Williams chords, chord progressions, bass turns, and the musical style of accompaniment that he would use in most
of his future songwriting. Later on, Williams recorded one of the songs that Payne taught him, "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It".
Williams' musical style contained influences from Payne along with several other country influences, among them "the Singing
Brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers, Milton Brown, Tommy Duncan, Moon Mullican, Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb. Payne and Williams eventually
lost touch. Williams later credited Tee-Tot as his only teacher.
In July 1937, the Williams moved to Montgomery, Alabama and together with the McNeil family opened a boarding house on South Perry Street in downtown Montgomery. It was at this time that Williams decided to change his name informally from Hiram to Hank. As Williams told the story about it in his later concerts, the name-change was supposedly all because of a cat's yowling, though, as the Hank Williams: The Biography authors point out, "Hank" simply sounds more like a hillbilly and western star than "Hiram". During the same year he participated in a talent show at the Empire Theater. He won the first prize of $15, singing his first original song "WPA Blues". Williams wrote the lyrics and used the tune of Riley Puckett's "Dissatisfied".
He never learned to read music and, for the rest of his career, based his compositions in storytelling and personal experience. After school and on weekends, Williams sang and played his Silvertone guitar on the sidewalk in front of the WSFA radio studio. His recent win at the Empire Theater and the street performances caught the attention of WSFA producers who occasionally invited him to perform on air. So many listeners contacted the radio station asking for more of "the singing kid", possibly influenced by his mother, that the producers hired him to host his own 15-minute show twice a week for a weekly salary of US$15 (equivalent to US$261.4 in 2019).
In August 1938, Elonzo Williams was temporarily released from the hospital. He showed up unannounced at the family's home in Montgomery. Lillie was unwilling to let him reclaim his position as the head of the household, so he stayed only long enough to celebrate Hank Williams' birthday in September before he returned to the medical center in Louisiana. Hank's mother had claimed that he was dead.
Williams' successful radio show fueled his entry into a music career. His salary was enough for him to start his own band,
which he dubbed the Drifting Cowboys, modeled in Western Swing style fiddle and steel guitar after his childhood idol band, Bob
Wills & his Texas Playboys. The original members were guitarist Braxton Schuffert, fiddler Freddie Beach, and comedian Smith
"Hezzy" Adair. James E. (Jimmy) Porter was the youngest, being only 13 when he started playing steel guitar for Williams. Arthur
Whiting was also a guitarist for The Drifting Cowboys. The band traveled throughout central and southern Alabama performing in
clubs and at private parties. James Ellis Garner later played fiddle for him. Lillie Williams became the Drifting Cowboys' manager.
Williams dropped out of school in October 1939 so that he and the Drifting Cowboys could work full-time. Lillie Williams began
booking show dates, negotiating prices and driving them to some of their shows. Now free to travel without Williams' schooling
taking precedence, the band could tour as far away west as Texas and to the east in the Florida Panhandle. The band started
playing in theaters before the start of the movies and later in honkey-tonks. Coupled with Williams' obvious talents as a singer
and songwriter was an increasing dependence on alcohol, which he'd started abusing to relieve his excruciating back pain. As a
result he was not considered a reliable performer. Meanwhile, between tour schedules, Williams returned to Montgomery to host
his radio show.
The American entry into World War II in 1941 marked the beginning of hard times for Williams. While Hank received a 4-F deferment from the military for his back after falling from a bull during a rodeo in Texas, his band members were all drafted to serve. Many of their replacements refused to play in the band due to Williams' worsening alcoholism. He continued to show up for his radio show intoxicated, so in August 1942 radio station WSFA fired him for "habitual drunkenness". During one of his concerts, Williams met his idol, Grand Ole Opry star Roy Acuff backstage, who later warned him of the dangers of alcohol, saying, "You've got a million-dollar talent, son, but a ten-cent brain."
He worked for the rest of the war for a shipbuilding company in Mobile, Alabama, as well as singing in bars for soldiers. In
1943 Williams met the love of his life Audrey Sheppard at a medicine show in Banks, Alabama. Williams and Sheppard lived and
worked together in Mobile. Sheppard later told Williams that she wanted to move to Montgomery with him and start a band together
and help him regain his radio show. The couple were married in 1944 at a Texaco Station in Andalusia, Alabama, by a justice of
the peace. The marriage was later declared illegal, since Sheppard's divorce from her previous husband did not comply with the
legally required sixty-day trial reconciliation.
In 1945, when he was back in Montgomery, Williams started to perform again for radio station WSFA. He wrote songs weekly to perform during the shows. As a result of the new variety of his repertoire, Williams published his first song book, Original Songs of Hank Williams. The book only listed lyrics, since its main purpose was to attract more audiences, though it's also possible that he didn't want to pay for transcribing the notes. It included ten songs: "Mother Is Gone", "Won't You Please Come Back", "My Darling Baby Girl" (with Audrey Sheppard), "Grandad's Musket", "I Just Wish I Could Forget", "Let's Turn Back the Years", "Honkey-Tonkey", "I Loved No One But You", "A Tramp on the Street", and "You'll Love Me Again". Williams became recognized as a songwriter, Sheppard became his manager and occasionally accompanied him on duets in some of his live concerts.
On September 14, 1946, Williams auditioned for Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, but was rejected. After the failure of his audition, Williams and Audrey Sheppard attempted to interest the recently formed music publishing firm Acuff-Rose Music. Audrey approached Fred Rose, the president of the company, during one of his habitual ping-pong games at WSM radio studios. Audrey asked Rose if her husband could sing a song for him on that moment, Rose agreed, and he liked Williams' musical style. Rose signed Williams to a six-song contract, and leveraged this deal to sign Williams with Sterling Records. On December 11, 1946, in his first recording session, he recorded "Wealth Won't Save Your Soul", "Calling You", "Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)", and "When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels". The recordings "Never Again" and "Honky Tonkin'" became successful, and earned Williams the attention of MGM Records.
Williams signed with MGM Records in 1947 and released the rollicking Western Swing inspired "Move It on Over"; considered by music
historians to be an early example of rock and roll, the song became a massive country hit. After his rejection from the Grand Ole Opry,
Williams decided in 1948 to move to Shreveport, Louisiana where he joined the Louisiana Hayride, a radio show broadcast that propelled
him into living rooms all over the southwest on weekend shows. Williams eventually started to host a show on Shreveport's KWKH and
started touring across western Louisiana and Texas, always returning on Saturdays for the weekly broadcast of the Hayride. After a
few more moderate hits, in 1949 he released his version of the old yodeling Western Swing song "Lovesick Blues", made popular in the
mid 1940s by Rex Griffin. Williams' version became a huge country hit; the song stayed at number one on the Billboard charts for four
consecutive months, crossing over to mainstream audiences and gaining Williams an immediate invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry. On
June 11, 1949, Williams made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, where he became the first performer to receive six encores. He then
brought together Bob McNett (guitar), Hillous Butrum (bass), Jerry Rivers (fiddle) and Don Helms (steel guitar) to form the most
famous version of the Drifting Cowboys, earning an estimated US$1,000 per show (equivalent to US$10,530.1 in 2019). That year Audrey
Williams gave birth to Randall Hank Williams (Hank Williams Jr.). During 1949, he joined the first European tour of the Grand Ole
Opry, performing in military bases in England, Germany and the Azores. Williams released seven hit songs after "Lovesick Blues",
including "Wedding Bells", "Mind Your Own Business", "You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)", and Tee-Tot's old tune "My
Bucket's Got a Hole in It".
In 1950, Williams began recording a
remarkable collection of songs under the pseudonym name of "Luke the Drifter" for his
heartfelt religious-themed recordings, many of which are recitations rather than singing. Fearful that disc jockeys and jukebox
operators would hesitate to accept these unusual recordings, Williams used this alias to avoid hurting the marketability of his
name. Although the real identity of Luke the Drifter was supposed to be anonymous, Williams often performed part of the material
of the recordings on stage. Most of the material was written by Williams himself, in some cases with the help of Fred Rose and
his son Wesley. The songs depicted Luke the Drifter traveling around from place to place, narrating stories of different characters
and philosophizing about life. Some of the compositions were accompanied by a pipe organ. It is regarded as some of Williams finest
work.
Around this time Williams released more hit songs, such as the tear-jerker "My Son Calls Another Man Daddy", "They'll Never Take Her Love from Me", "Why Should We Try Anymore", "Nobody's Lonesome for Me", "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", "Why Don't You Love Me", "Moanin' the Blues", and "I Just Don't Like This Kind of Living". In 1951, "Dear John" became a hit, but it was the flip-side, "Cold, Cold Heart", that became one of his most-recognized songs. A pop cover version by Tony Bennett released the same year stayed on the charts for 27 weeks, peaking at Billboard number one.
Williams' career reached a peak in the late summer of 1951 with his Hadacol tour of the U.S. with actor Bob Hope and other
luminaries. During the tour, Williams was photographed signing a motion-picture deal with MGM. In October, Williams recorded a
demo, "There's a Tear in My Beer" for a friend, "Big Bill Lister", who recorded it in the studio. Decades later, that demo was
overdubbed by his son, Hank Williams Jr. On November 14, 1951, Williams flew to New York with his steel guitar player Don Helms
where he appeared on television for the first time on The Perry Como Show. There he and Perry Como sang "Hey Good Lookin'".
Photos but no existing footage remains of this national appearance.
"Ramblin' Man" was written in 1951 by Williams. It was released as the B-side to the 1953 #1 hit "Take These Chains from My Heart", as well as to the 1976 re-release of "Why Don't You Love Me". It is also included on the 40 Greatest Hits, a staple of his CD re-released material.
In November 1951, Williams suffered a fall during a hunting trip with his fiddler Jerry Rivers in Franklin, Tennessee. The fall reactivated his old back pains. He later started to consume painkillers, including morphine, and alcohol to ease the pain. On May 21, he had been admitted to North Louisiana Sanitarium for the treatment of his alcoholism, leaving on May 24. On December 13, 1951, he had a spinal fusion at Vanderbilt University Hospital, being released on December 24. During his recovery, he lived with his mother in Montgomery, and later moved to Nashville, living together with the rising Texas Country star Ray Price.
During the spring of 1952, Williams flew to New York with steel guitarist Don Helms, where he made two appearances with other Grand Ole Opry members on The Kate Smith Show. He sang "Cold, Cold Heart", "Hey Good Lookin''", "Glory Bound Train" and "I Saw the Light" with other cast members, and a duet, "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" with Anita Carter. Footage remains of these appearances. That same year, Hank had a brief extramarital affair with dancer Bobbi Jett, with whom he fathered a daughter, Jett Williams (born January 6, 1953, two days after his burial).
In June 1952, he recorded "Jambalaya (on the Bayou)", "Window Shopping", "Settin' the Woods on Fire", and "I'll Never Get out
of this World Alive". In early July, Audrey Williams filed for divorce. The next day he recorded "You Win Again" and "I Won't be
Home No More". Around this time, he met the beauty queen Billie Jean Jones, a girlfriend of country singer Faron Young, at the
Grand Ole Opry. As a girl, Jones had lived down the street from Williams when he was with the Louisiana Hayride, and now Williams
began to visit her frequently in Shreveport, causing him to miss many Grand Ole Opry appearances.
On August 11, 1952, Williams was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry for habitual drunkenness and missing shows. He returned to Shreveport, Louisiana to perform on KWKH and WBAM shows and in the Louisiana Hayride, for which he toured again. His performances were acclaimed when he was sober, but despite the efforts of his work associates to get him to shows sober, his abuse of alcohol resulted in occasions when he did not appear or his performances were poor.
On October 18, 1952, Hank Williams and Billie Jean Jones Eshlimar were married in Minden, Louisiana by a Justice of the Peace. It was the second marriage for both (each being divorced with children). The next day, two public ceremonies were also held at the New Orleans Civic Auditorium, where 14,000 seats were sold for each. After Williams' death, a judge ruled that the wedding was not legal because Jones Eshlimar's divorce had not become final until eleven days after she married Williams. Williams' first wife, Audrey, and his mother, Lillie Williams, were the driving forces behind having the marriage declared invalid to insure they would retain the rights to Hank's music. They pursued the matter for years until it was finally ruled in their favor. Coincidentally, Williams had also married Audrey Sheppard before her divorce was final, on the tenth day of a required 60-day reconciliation period.
During his last recording session on September 23, 1952, Williams recorded "Kaw-Liga", along with "Your Cheatin' Heart", "Take
These Chains from My Heart", and "I Could Never be Ashamed of You". Due to Williams' excesses, Fred Rose stopped working with him.
By the end of 1952, Williams had started to suffer heart problems. He met Horace "Toby" Marshall in Oklahoma City, who said that
he was a doctor. Marshall had been previously convicted for forgery, and had been paroled and released from the Oklahoma State
Penitentiary in 1951. Among other fake titles he said that he was a Doctor of Science. He purchased the DSC title for $25 from
the Chicago School of Applied Science; in the diploma, he requested that the DSC be illegally spelled out as "Doctor of Science
and Psychology". Under the fake name of Dr. C. W. Lemon he prescribed Williams with amphetamines, Seconal, chloral hydrate, and
morphine, which made his heart problems much worse.
Williams was scheduled to perform at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia on Wednesday December 31, 1952. Advance ticket sales totaled US$3,500. That day, because of an ice storm in the Nashville area, Williams could not fly, so he hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to the concert. Carr called the Charleston auditorium from Knoxville to say that Williams would not arrive on time owing to the ice storm and was ordered to drive Williams to Canton, Ohio, for the New Year's Day concert there.
They arrived at the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Carr requested a doctor for Williams, as he was feeling
the combination of the chloral hydrate and alcohol he had been drinking all the way from Montgomery to Knoxville. Dr. P.H. Cardwell
injected Williams with two shots of vitamin B12 that also contained a quarter-grain of morphine. Carr and Williams checked out of
the hotel; the porters had to carry Williams to the car, as he was coughing and hiccuping. At around midnight on Thursday January 1,
1953, when they crossed the Tennessee state line and arrived in Bristol, Virginia, Carr stopped at a small all-night restaurant and
asked Williams if he wanted to eat. Williams said he did not, and those are believed to be his last words. Carr later drove on until
he stopped for fuel at a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, where he realized that Williams was dead, and rigor mortis had
already set in. The filling station's owner called the chief of the local police. In Williams' Cadillac, the police found some empty
beer cans and unfinished handwritten lyrics.
Dr. Ivan Malinin performed the autopsy at the Tyree Funeral House. Malinin found hemorrhages in the heart and neck and pronounced the cause of death as "insufficiency of the right ventricle of the heart". That evening, when the announcer at Canton announced Williams' death to the gathered crowd, they started laughing, thinking that it was just another excuse. After Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing "I Saw the Light" as a tribute to Williams, the shocked crowd, now realizing that he was indeed dead, sang along. Malinin also wrote that Williams had been severely beaten and kicked in the groin recently. Also, local magistrate Virgil F. Lyons ordered an inquest into Williams' death concerning the welt that was visible on his head.
His body was transported to Montgomery, Alabama, on Friday January 2 and placed in a silver coffin that was first shown at his mother's boarding house for two days. His funeral took place on Sunday January 4 at the Montgomery Auditorium, with his coffin placed on the flower-covered stage. An estimated 25,000 people passed by the silver coffin, and the auditorium was jam-packed with 9,750 mourners. His funeral was said to have been far larger than any ever held for any other citizen of Alabama and the largest event ever held in the state of Alabama. Williams' remains are interred at the Oakwood Annex in Montgomery. The president of MGM told Billboard magazine that the company got only about five requests for pictures of Williams during the weeks before his death, but over three hundred thousand afterwards. The local record shops reportedly sold-out of all their Williams records, and customers were asking for all records ever released by Williams. His final single, released in November 1952 while he was still alive, was ironically titled "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive". "Your Cheatin' Heart" was written and recorded in September 1952 but released in late January 1953 after Williams' death. The song, backed by "Kaw-Liga", was number one on the country charts for a record 36 weeks. It provided the title for the 1964 biographical film of the same name, which starred George Hamilton. "Take These Chains >From My Heart" was released in October 1953 and went to #1 on the country charts. "I Won't Be Home No More", released in July, went to #3, and an overdubbed demo, "Weary Blues From Waitin'", written with Ray Price, went to #7.
Williams is widely recognized as "The King of Country Music", a title he now shares with fellow famed Texas Western Swing artist George Strait. Alabama governor Gordon Persons officially proclaimed September 21 "Hank Williams Day". The first celebration, in 1954 featured the unveiling of a monument at the Cramton Bowl, that was later placed in the grave site of Williams. The ceremony featured Ferlin Husky interpreting "I Saw the Light".
Williams had 11 number one country hits in his career ("Lovesick Blues", "Long Gone Lonesome Blues", "Why Don't You Love Me", "Moanin' the Blues", "Cold, Cold Heart", "Hey, Good Lookin'", "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)", "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive", "Kaw-Liga", "Your Cheatin' Heart", and "Take These Chains from My Heart"), as well as many other top ten hits.
On February 8, 1960, Williams' star was placed at 6400 Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was inducted into
the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1961 and into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1985. When Downbeat magazine took a poll the year
after Williams' death, he was voted the most popular Country and Western performer of all time-ahead of such giants as Jimmie Rodgers,
Bob Wills, Roy Acuff, Red Foley, Ernest Tubb and Lefty Frizzell.
In 1977, a national organization of CB truck drivers voted "Your Cheatin' Heart" as their favorite record of all time. In 1987, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame under the category "Early Influence". He was ranked second in CMT's 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003, behind only Johnny Cash. His son, Hank Jr., was ranked on the same list.
In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him number 74 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The website Acclaimedmusic.com, which collates recommendations of albums and recording artists, has a year-by-year recommendation for top artists. Hank Williams is ranked first for the decade 1940-1949 for his song "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". Many artists of the 1950s and 1960s, including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Tammy Wynette, David Houston, Jerry Lee Lewis, Merle Haggard, Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, Ricky Nelson, Jack Scott, and Conway Twitty recorded Williams songs during their careers.
In 2011, Williams' 1949 MGM number one hit, "Lovesick Blues", was inducted into the Recording Academy Grammy Hall of Fame. The same year Hank Williams: The Complete Mother's Best Recordings was honored with a Grammy nomination for Best Historical Album. In 1999, Williams was inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame. On April 12, 2010, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Williams a posthumous special citation that paid tribute to his "craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life". Keeping his legacy alive, Williams' son, Hank Williams Jr., daughter Jett Williams, grandson Hank Williams III, and granddaughters Hilary Williams and Holly Williams are also successful country & western musicians.
In 2006, a janitor of Sony/ATV Music Publishing found in a dumpster the unfinished lyrics written by Williams that had been found in his car the night he died. The worker claimed that she sold Williams' notes to a representative of the Honky-Tonk Hall of Fame and the Rock-N-Roll Roadshow. The janitor was accused of theft, but the charges were later dropped when a judge determined that her version of events was true. The unfinished lyrics were later returned to Sony/ATV, which handed them to Bob Dylan in 2008 to complete the songs for a new album. Ultimately, the completion of the album included recordings by Alan Jackson, Norah Jones, Jack White, Lucinda Williams, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, Levon Helm, Jakob Dylan, Sheryl Crow and Merle Haggard. The album, named The Lost Notebook of Hank Williams was released to widespread critical acclaim on October 4, 2011.
Material recorded by Williams, originally intended for radio broadcasts to be played when he was on tour, or for its distribution to radio stations nationwide resurfaced throughout time. In 1993, a double-disc set of recordings of Williams for the Health & Happiness Show was released. Broadcast in 1949, the shows were recorded for the promotion of Hadacol. The set was re-released on Hank Williams: The Legend Begins in 2011. The album included unreleased songs inspired by Hank's love of early Western Swing legend, Milton Brown - "Fan It" and "Oh You Pretty Woman", recorded by Williams at age fifteen; the homemade recordings of him singing "Freight Train Blues", "New San Antonio Rose", "St. Louis Blues" and "Greenback Dollar" at age eighteen; and a recording for the 1951 March of Dimes. In May 2014, further radio recordings by Williams were released. The Garden Spot Programs, 1950, a series of publicity segments for plant nursery Naughton Farms originally aired in 1950. The recordings were found by collector George Gimarc at radio station KSIB in Creston, Iowa. Gimarc contacted Williams' daughter Jett, and Colin Escott, writer of a biography book on Williams. The material was restored and remastered by Michael Graves and released by Omnivore Recordings.
In June 2016, British actor Tom Hiddleston portrayed Williams in the biopic movie I Saw the Light, based on Colin Escott's 1994 book Hank Williams: The Biography. Marc Abraham directed the film. Filming took place in October through December 2014 and the film was released in 2016.